U.S. Consulate in Israel Auctions Sensitive Information

Who needs to hack a database when you can get information the old-fashioned, low-tech way?

The U.S. consulate in Israel held an auction in December 2005 to get rid of old furniture and reportedly sold cabinets containing hundreds of files with Social Security numbers of U.S. Marines and state department staff stationed in Israel. The files also included U.S. State Department bank account numbers and documents tracking the U.S. funding of local political movements, such as Shalom Achshav, Peace Now.

Among the files was a dossier marked “Secret” detailing an encounter between a U.S. Marine and a young Israeli woman in a Jerusalem hotel bar.

The woman who bought the filing cabinets, an American-Israeli, held on silently to her trove until last fall when an event involving her son’s Israeli army unit angered her and she approached reporters. The U.S. consulate asked for her to return the files, but she refused until the Israeli police intervened and threatened her with unspecified charges.

The story doesn’t indicate whether the State Department notified the U.S. Marines and state department employees that their data was breached.